horror stricken when a book was produced, written in Libo’s own hand,
in which the names of the Emperor and leading Senators were found
with strange and occult marks appended. This gentleman, who wanted
to converse with the dead, was, if a fool, a dangerous fool. It was
decided to question his slaves; but as they could not legally bear
evidence against their master, it was necessary to transfer them to
another owner, and a remand was granted in order that this might
be done. This skilful evasion of the law of evidence is attributed
by Tacitus to the cunning inventiveness of Tiberius; but it is not
probable that the Romans had waited so long to discover a solution of
a frequently recurring difficulty. Libo went home, entrusting his last
entreaties to the Emperor to the care of a relative. A guard was set
round his house; the soldiers were even heard and seen in the outer
hall. Libo ordered himself a magnificent dinner, but even in the midst
of the sumptuous repast his craven spirit gave way; he handed a sword
to his slaves and implored them to kill him. In the confusion that
ensued the lights were overturned, and the miserable man succeeded in
taking his own life in the funereal darkness. As soon as his death was
made known the soldiers departed.
In spite of the suicide of the delinquent the case was continued on the
following day; but Tiberius took an oath that he would have asked for
the culprit’s life, even though proved guilty, had he not anticipated
the sentence. Libo’s goods were divided between his accusers, and
extraordinary prætorships were given to such of them as were of
senatorial rank. Various Senators then proposed measures indicating
their opinion that the case had been a very grave one. Libo’s image was
no longer to be included among the family busts; no Scribonius was ever
again to be called Drusus; a public thanksgiving was to be held; gifts
were to be offered to Jupiter, Mars and Concord; the day on which Libo
killed himself was to be a holiday for ever. Decrees of the Senate were
also passed, expelling “mathematicians” and magians from Italy; two of
their number were summarily executed.
Tacitus stigmatizes all these proposals, so strangely disproportionate
to the event as it appears to us, as acts of adulation to Tiberius;
but after all Tiberius was not the only person concerned, nor indeed
chiefly concerned. There is no evidence of a plot against Tiberius
more than against the other Senators, whose names were included in the
mysterious notebook.
As a matter of fact, on this occasion as on many subsequent occasions,
the Senators lost their heads; they, and not Tiberius, were responsible
for the excesses of the sentence and the subsequent transactions. The
fear of magic was strong upon them, as their subsequent action in
driving the practisers of magic arts from Italy demonstrates. They did
not succeed in doing so, and similar equally futile senatorial decrees
recur again and again. These solemn rulers of the world behaved like
little children in their terror of the black art; they believed in
incantations, divinations, signs and wonders, spells and imprecations
far more strongly than they did in the precepts of the Stoic and the
Epicurean. Here and there we find one of the ancients superior to the
prevailing superstitions, but only here and there; and in the Roman
palaces, no less than at the court of Louis XIV., the plotter and the
poisoner were hand in hand with the crafty charlatans, or self-deceived
miracle workers, who haunted the private apartments of men and women of
rank.
Tiberius could not have resisted the panic of the Senate on this
occasion, even if he had had the opportunity; we shall find magic a
couple of years later playing an important part in a more notable
prosecution.
Libo was evidently a profligate fool, and not likely to have been
implicated in a serious plot; but it is not impertinent to ask where
Tacitus got his detailed information; the case is hardly mentioned by
other authors. The scene of the suicide is graphic, the authority whom
Tacitus uses is clearly in sympathy with Libo. Now Libo was, as we
have seen, related to the Julians, and it is at least probable that a
version of the story was supplied by a correspondent to Agrippina, who
was at the time in Germany, and so became incorporated in the memoirs
which she handed down to her daughter, who again used it in the memoirs
which Tacitus tells us that he saw.
The two “mathematicians” who were summarily punished suffered different
penalties: Pituarius was thrown from the Tarpeian rock, Marcius was
proceeded against “in the manner of our forefathers”; the trumpet was
sounded, calling the centuries to the Campus Martius, the unhappy man
was then bound to a stake, and beaten with rods till he was dead,
after which his head was cut off; these privileges he enjoyed as being
a Roman citizen infected with a foreign superstition. It is to be hoped
that he really was a charlatan, and not a genuine man of science, who
paid the common penalty for being in advance of his age.
XV
Germanicus and Piso
The death of Germanicus occupies a larger space in the annals of
Tacitus than the actual importance of the event would seem to require.
The space given to the transactions in the East by which it was
preceded, and the trial of Piso by which it was followed, amounts to
nearly a sixth part of the books dealing with the reign of Tiberius;
or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the aspects of the
premature death of Germanicus, which were really important, receive
small attention in comparison with those which were less important.
The death of Germanicus opened the way to the long series of plots
which rendered the life of Tiberius intolerable, and eventually
overwhelmed him in the disastrous events of the year 30 A.D. When
Germanicus started for the East in the year 18 A.D., he was the
destined successor of Tiberius, with a possible coadjutor in the person
of his first cousin Drusus, the two men being legally brothers by
the process of adoption. If Tiberius had any personal preference, he
unquestionably inclined to Germanicus, to whom he showed every mark of
favour, and whose political training he was now completing by sending
him to study the Oriental difficulties of the Empire. Drusus at the
same time was promoted to his brother’s former position in the West,
the still disturbed provinces on the frontiers of the Rhine and Danube
being entrusted to his care. Had both these men lived, there would
have been no Sejanus, and probably no Caligula. Tiberius himself would
have permanently enjoyed for ever the excellent reputation which he
won during the first sixteen years of his reign, but an unkind destiny
willed it otherwise.
There was no reason why Tiberius should dislike Germanicus, to whose
father, as we have seen, he was attached by an affection remarkable
even between brothers, and Germanicus himself had on an occasion, which
strongly tested his loyalty, shown that it could stand the test. All
the authorities, Paterculus included, speak highly of Germanicus; he
was an able general and a lovable man. Drusus was a less attractive
character, somewhat rough, severe and passionate, but whatever his
weaknesses, he had the merit of being attached to his cousin and
nominal elder brother; there is no trace of any jealousy between the
two men, and their unity was further cemented by the fact that the
sister of Germanicus was the wife of Drusus.
While the three representative men of the Imperial family were thus
in harmony, and lived on terms of mutual trust and helpfulness, the
case was different with the women. Livia, the widow of Augustus, and
Agrippina, the daughter of Julia, were separated by ancient hatreds and
fresh causes of offence. If the whole private diary and correspondence
of Agrippina had been preserved to us, we should probably be in a
position to compare Livia with Madame de Maintenon, as she is exhibited
to us in the lively letters of that sturdy little hater, Charlotte
Elizabeth, Duchess of Orleans, for the memoirs of Agrippina, filtered
through her daughter’s editing, and the mind of a man of letters
indicate no want of a proper animosity, no desire to bury old grudges.
Livia did not acquiesce willingly in her diminished glories as dowager;
if she had proposed to herself--and there is every reason to suppose
that she did so propose--to continue to be the power behind the
throne in her son’s reign, as in her husband’s, she was disappointed.
While studiously paying every sign of respect to his mother as his
mother, and even stretching points in her favour, Tiberius refused to
acknowledge her as a politician; such honours as might decorously be
paid to the widow of Augustus, such consolations of her affliction as
expressions of public sympathy could afford, he readily sanctioned, but
he no less resolutely drew the line at the point at which complimentary
and consolatory decrees seemed to involve the recognition of a
governing Empress Dowager. Few things can have been more distasteful
to Livia than the reversion to the Senatorial Constitution attempted
by Tiberius. She could no longer inspire “transactions of Cæsar,” to
which the Senate was pledged in anticipation, nor was Tiberius inclined
to let the foreign policy of Rome slip out of his own hands into
that of the Jews and Greeks who enjoyed the confidence of the august
lady. A king of Cappadocia, of whom Tiberius disapproved, accepted an
invitation from Livia to come to Rome and depend on her influence to
win the favour of her son. The result was so disappointing that the
aged monarch died of distress of mind; his kingdom was turned into a
province. Tiberius would stand no tampering with “native” princes. Nor
was Livia allowed to put herself above the laws at Rome. A lady named
Urgulania, who was a friend of hers, incurred debts, and was proceeded
against in the court of the Prætor Urbanus. She took refuge with Livia,
who urged her son to defend the lady’s cause. Tiberius undertook to do
so, but by very deliberate walking, and exceptional graciousness to
the friends whom he encountered on the way, contrived to arrive too
late. Urgulania lost her case, and Livia had to pay her friend’s debt.
The Prætor in this case was Lucius Piso. Shortly afterwards this same
Urgulania refused to give her evidence in a court of law, and required
the officials to take it in her own house, a privilege which belonged
to the Vestal virgins. Urgulania was not a Vestal virgin “emerita,”
determined to retain the advantages of her previous position with
the help of Livia, for we find her later on sending a dagger as a
significant hint to a scandalous grandson.
Tiberius was certainly in a very difficult position with regard to
his mother. His natural sense of decorum, and possibly his natural
affection, made him shrink from the very appearance of treating her
with disrespect; but her domineering tendency, encouraged by years
of unquestioned sway during her husband’s lifetime, tempted her to
exaggerate the real claims which she had upon his dutiful affection;
nor were the ladies of her household backward in regretting the change
of circumstances, and in pointing out how different things had been
in the lifetime of the sainted Augustus. Delicate as they were in
any case, the relations between mother and son were rendered still
more susceptible to disagreeable incidents by the presence of the
aggrieved Agrippina, to whom mother and son alike were detestable
usurpers, enjoying as the result of their nefarious intrigues the
inalienable rights of the true Julians. Thus both the belligerent
parties were opposed to Tiberius; his mother because he prevented her
from continuing to enjoy a power which she had long exercised, his
daughter-in-law, stepdaughter and niece, because in her opinion he
usurped a power which she ought to have enjoyed, and because she had
learned to regard her mother as a saint martyred by the agency of her
stepfather in the cause of the Julian dynasty. There was no reason why
Livia should like Drusus better than Germanicus; both her grandsons
were alike leagued with her undutiful son to keep the shadow of
petticoats off the Senate House.
Tiberius made his arrangements without taking the ladies into
consideration. There was one member of the family whom he may have
been glad to please, the beautiful Antonia, the widow of his brother
Drusus and the mother of Germanicus. It is to the credit of this lady
that her name is never mentioned in the list of intriguers; she escapes
both praise and censure, though her persistent determination to live in
retirement as a widow might have attracted the attention of those who
found so much to admire in the “impenetrable chastity” of Agrippina.
Perhaps the fortress of her virtue was less frequently assailed by
those storms, assaults, blockades, and circumvallations which, we
may presume, rendered the epithet no hyperbole in the case of her
daughter-in-law.
The affairs of the East needed a comprehensive survey. Achaia and
Macedonia had recently passed into the Emperor’s hands; the Senatorial
Government had been defective in Bithynia; several of the Greek
cities on the Ægæan had suffered severely in a disastrous earthquake;
Cappadocia was being organized as a province; there were dynastic
troubles in Armenia; the Parthians were showing signs of restlessness;
the native princes on the Syrian frontier were also unsettled by
questions of succession; Judæa was more than usually unquiet.
Germanicus was therefore despatched to the East with proconsular
powers, which gave him an authority higher than that of all proconsuls
or governors in their own provinces, and with a commission to settle
all differences on the spot according to his own judgment. So large a
share of power had never been entrusted to any one except Augustus and
Pompeius. On a previous occasion when the same services were required,
Augustus had himself visited the East and conducted the business in
person, but he was then a younger man than Tiberius was now, and he was
able to leave behind him in the person of Mæcenas a more experienced,
or at least more trustworthy, statesman than any who were within
reach of Tiberius. Drusus, though a good soldier, had not shown
statesmanlike qualities.
At the same time a new Governor was required for Syria, the richest of
the Imperial Provinces, for its capital, Antioch, was the second city
of the Empire, the emporium where East met West. To this post Tiberius
appointed Gnæus Piso. Gnæus Piso belonged to a family which had long
maintained its opposition to the Cæsars, although the last wife of
Julius Cæsar, Calpurnia, had been a daughter of the house. Republican
ideals were still cherished in this, one of the most ancient and noble
of Roman families. The efforts of Tiberius to restore the Senate
had not had a happy influence upon the two leading members of this
house; one brother, Lucius, threatened to retire from public business
altogether, disgusted with the obsequiousness of the Senate; the other,
Gnæus, had distinguished himself by an aggressive outspokenness which
threatened to breed unnecessary difficulties. Lucius was the Prætor who
had refused to allow Urgulania to avoid paying her just debts, and for
this reason it is improbable that Gnæus was in the confidence of Livia.
He had rendered himself undesirable at Rome, but Tiberius had no doubt
of his integrity, and thought that if he were honourably withdrawn
for a time from the centre of affairs, public business would march
more smoothly. Tiberius in fact was beginning to learn that it was not
altogether wise to revive the pretensions of the old families.
Unfortunately Tiberius did not foresee the possibility of friction
between Germanicus and Piso; still less did he take into account
the results of the juxtaposition of two such explosive fireships as
Agrippina and Plancina the wife of Piso; and he forgot that Plancina
was among the devoted friends of Livia, who had a long-standing
personal interest in the affairs of Syria and its adjacent
principalities. It was the scene of her first diplomatic triumphs,
the place where she had cemented by the interchange of presents a
friendship with that worthy pater-familias Herod the Great, whose
posterity shared with Jerusalem the honour of being a meeting point of
the intrigues of the Jews of all nations.
The story of the events which followed is so obviously coloured by the
partisanship of the chief actors that much of it must be far from the
truth. It is not, for instance, easy to believe that Piso, having no
authority outside his own province, would follow Germanicus to Athens,
where Germanicus had authority, and take a pleasure in reversing his
compliments to the Athenians. There is no inherent improbability in the
action ascribed to Piso inside his own province, where he practically
refused to recognize the proconsular power of Germanicus, but he could
hardly with safety have followed the footsteps of Germanicus eastwards,
loudly proclaiming his insubordination in places where he had no more
right to express an opinion than a private citizen; had he done so, a
swift Liburnian galley would have brought his letters of recall. Idle
stories of this kind probably took their origin at a later period, and
were communicated with mistaken zeal to Agrippina by her sympathizing
friends.
At first all went well with Germanicus, and his commission bore
the appearance of a holiday progress. He met his brother Drusus at
Nicopolis, the city which had been built to commemorate the victory
off the promontory of Actium, and they celebrated the glorious event
in company; he then went to Athens, and up the Ægæan into the Euxine,
redressing grievances and visiting holy places. In the course of the
tour Agrippina’s youngest daughter Julia was born at Lesbos, destined
afterwards to marry M. Vinicius, the friend of Paterculus. On the
return journey southwards Germanicus met the convoy of Piso at Rhodes
on its way to Syria, where, the historian tells us, that Germanicus,
though well aware of the persecution of Piso, saved his ship from
destruction in a storm. Germanicus made his way from thence to Armenia
and the frontiers of the Empire, where he conducted his negotiations
with success. Meanwhile Piso hurried on his way to Syria, and at once
began to make favour with the army and the residents. His indulgences
to the troops were such that the soldiers called him “father of the
legions”; while Plancina, to the horror of Agrippina, forgetting the
limitations of her sex, took part in drills and parades.
The first overt act of insubordination on the part of Piso was a
neglect to forward some cohorts to Germanicus in Armenia. On the return
of Germanicus he met Piso, and an attempt to adjust their mutual
differences was rendered ineffective by the mischievous offices of
friends. Germanicus himself was inclined to take a lenient view, but he
was influenced by the suggestions of those who told him exaggerated
stories about Piso and his sons and Plancina. A private conference was
held, but the two men left it open enemies. After this Piso publicly
resented all honours paid to Germanicus, and Plancina was particularly
annoyed because her somewhat lucrative protégé Vonones, a former
aspirant to the Parthian crown, was removed by Germanicus at the
request of the Parthians to a safer distance from the frontier.
Germanicus finding that the best part of his work was accomplished,
and that life in Syria was not pleasant, made a tour in Egypt, going
up the Nile as far as Elephantine and Syene, then the limit of Roman
rule. It is pleasing to find him visiting the same sights that attract
the modern traveller, over whom he had an advantage in that the priests
were able to read the inscriptions for him.
In visiting Egypt, Germanicus inadvertently broke a decree of Augustus,
which forbade any Roman Senator or Equestrian to enter that private
domain of the Emperor without special permission. Tiberius had written
to bring this to his notice, but the letter arrived too late.
On returning from his holiday tour in Egypt, Germanicus found that all
his arrangements in Syria had been reversed by Piso, his disposition
of the legions had been changed, and his formal alliances with the
cities modified. Stormy scenes followed, and Piso decided to leave
Syria, so says our narrative; but the more probable order of events is
that Piso was ordered by Germanicus to withdraw, and was at Seleucia
on his way home when news reached him of the illness of Germanicus.
We are not told the nature of this illness. Agrippina and possibly
Germanicus himself jumped to the conclusion that poison and spells were
the cause of the sickness. Horrible things were found in the house;
fragments of human remains embedded in the floors and walls; bits of
parchment covered with spells; leaden tablets inscribed with the name
of Germanicus, and other mystic apparatus with which it was customary
to consign the spirit of an enemy to the shades. The illness seems to
have been a lingering one. Piso hovered off the coast, approaching
or withdrawing as the symptoms were declared to be better or worse.
In the end Germanicus died. Agrippina and her friends were so fully
persuaded that he had been the victim of poison or witchcraft, that
they exposed his body naked in the market place at Antioch, confident
that the flames of the funeral pyre would fail to devour his heart, for
it was well known that the heart of a man who had been poisoned was
incombustible. When the ceremony was over, Agrippina gathered up the
ashes and started with her youngest children for Rome.
Meanwhile the Senators and other officials who had been in the train
of Germanicus treated the Province of Syria as though it were vacant,
and appointed Gnæus Sentius, one of their number, Governor in the place
of Piso. There was no time to send to Rome for orders. Germanicus had
cashiered Piso, but had died before appointing his successor, and it
was necessary that there should be some one in authority, in case Piso
returned and attempted to resume the government of Syria.
Piso had travelled on his homeward journey as far as Cos, when the news
of the death of Germanicus reached him. He made thanksgiving offerings
to the gods, and Plancina, who had recently lost a sister, threw off
her mourning. Consultations were held as to the best course to pursue.
Marcus Piso, the younger of his two sons, urged his father to return
to Rome. So far he had done nothing unpardonable, but an attempt to
resume the government of the province meant nothing less than civil
war. Other and less prudent friends advised Piso not to recognize the
appointment of Sentius, and to rely on his popularity with the legions.
Tacitus puts into the mouth of these advisers the following astounding
statement, which he probably found in those memoirs of Agrippina which
are not evidence: “You have the complicity of Livia, the favour of
Cæsar though hidden, and none mourn more loudly for Germanicus than
those who are best pleased at his death.”
Piso and Plancina proved to have miscalculated the affection of the
legions, and an attempt to recover Syria by force was defeated by
Sentius, who gave the unhappy candidate for power ships and a safe
conduct to Rome.
Agrippina meanwhile had traversed the seas and arrived at Brundisium
with the vase containing her husband’s ashes early in the year 20
A.D. The illness and death of Germanicus had excited much feeling
in the city and Italy, though we are not bound to believe in the
dark suggestions of the historian that the populace had assumed the
complicity of Tiberius in his nephew’s death. The widow made the
best of her affliction, and contrived to give the procession to the
Mausoleum of Augustus, in which her husband’s ashes were deposited,
the aspect of a public demonstration in favour of the Julian race.
Neither Tiberius himself, nor Livia, nor even the mother of Germanicus,
were present at this ceremony. Doubtless they had sufficient reasons,
but their absence unfortunately favoured the credulity of those who
at a later time listened to the lamentations of Agrippina, and her
passionate assertions that her husband had been done to death with the
connivance of his own kith and kin.